Alcohol Summit held yesterday

In an attempt to do away with the taboo associated with talking about alcohol, the university encouraged a heated discussion yesterday about alcohol-related issues, including lowering the drinking age and the prevalence of drinking among college students.

In a six-hour Alcohol Summit held in the Colony Ballroom at the Stamp Student Union yesterday, attendees were encouraged to think critically about college students' relationship with alcohol and what should be done to change it. The summit was formed in response to University President Dan Mote's and University System of Maryland Chancellor Brit Kirwan's decision to sign the Amethyst Initiative - a petition that urges university administrators to discuss on-campus binge drinking and the effectiveness of the legal drinking age.

But according to the College Life Study conducted by the Center for Substance Abuse Research, an on-campus research organization that focuses on alcohol behavior among college students, students' drinking behaviors are largely defined by the time students are 18 - before they come to college.

"From what we've seen, there's not a lot of evidence that shows that students go from not drinking at all straight to binge drinking all the time," CESAR Director Eric Wish said. "[Drinking] patterns were all defined at entry to college."

The study also shows the frequency of students' alcohol consumption increases over time, as does the number of students drinking - 17 percent of students surveyed did not drink upon entry to college while only 5 percent remained non-drinkers by graduation, a statistic critics say can be chalked up to the social importance college students associate with alcohol.

"There is nothing wrong with education, but we need to change the campus environment," said James Fell, a senior program director at Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. "The idea that lowering the drinking age will fix the problem is ridiculous. ... Students lose their inhibitions under the influence. I don't see how they could be responsible drinkers if the drinking age was any lower."

Fell suggested the best way to cut back on dangerous, alcohol-induced behavior among minors is through tougher underage drinking laws and stricter enforcement.

"People say you shouldn't [drink] but then give no permission to enforce it," Fell said. "[Underage drinking] is socially unacceptable; it's not a rite of passage."

University Police spokesman Paul Dillon said last month alone 16 students had to be taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, an occurrence police try to prevent by enforcing current drinking codes.

"That's scary to me," Dillon said. "That's 16 students who could have died."

University Police arrested 184 people for liquor law violations in 2007, up from 152 in 2006 and 129 in 2005.

"[Police] are not great at peer education and social norming," Dillon said. "But we are good at enforcing the law, and that's what we're going to do."

Other higher education experts, however, have very different opinions on how to solve the problem of binge drinking on the campus. John McCardell, a former president of Middlebury College and founder of Choose Responsibility - a group that advocates lowering the drinking age to 18 - started the Amethyst Initiative to urge open discussion on this contentious issue. Though both Mote and Kirwan signed the petition and organized the summit, neither has taken a stance on lowering the drinking age.

But many voiced their opinions in favor of lowering the drinking age to 18, saying it would benefit the campus community by eliminating the need for dangerous drinking behaviors.

"I completely support lowering the drinking age," senior chemistry major and Student Health Advisory Committee President Nizar Dowla said. "Once you come to campus, you can drink no matter how old you are if that's what you want to do. If it was legal, students could concentrate on making smart decisions rather than trying to figure out how to get around the law."

Nearly half of the 450 people who attended the event were students, organizers said.

Administrators said the student voice was a necessary one to have represented, and one that is often left out of policy discussions about alcohol consumption.

"This was a wonderful day," Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs Warren Kelly said. "It's a complex issue that people tend to have simple ideas about what will work, and we need to understand all the layers of the issue before we can get at enacting any solutions. I feel really affirmed to see that students know a lot and really care."

The issue of Good Samaritan policies - a proposed policy that would grant amnesty to students who call 911 with concerns about dangerously intoxicated friends - was not raised for discussion during the course of the summit.

langdbk@gmail.com